Politico: “Sessions and his deputy show some daylight.” From Josh Gerstein and Seung Min Kim: “One such moment came when Sessions testified that Comey likely had an obligation to notify Congress when new evidence emerged in the probe into Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails last October. … However, the letter Rosenstein wrote last month as part of the process of firing Comey indicated that the FBI director actually should have remained mum. … Sessions had appeared to endorse Rosenstein’s memo last month, so it was surprising that he took the opposite position at one point on Tuesday.”

The Arizona Republic: “John McCain sticks to a script with Sessions testimony.” From Dan Nowicki: “Unlike his performance at the June 8 Comey hearing, when his questions came out slow and, in at least one case, garbled, McCain at all times appeared serious and deliberative, never smiling. He sounded a little hoarse and occasionally coughed or cleared his throat. He also appeared to refer closely to written material.”

The New York Times’s Frank Bruni, widening the aperture in his column, calls Sessions “a flustered Gump in the headlights”: “The appearance … didn’t bring us much closer to understanding what did or didn’t happen … But as I watched him … I saw a broader story, a dark parable of bets misplaced and souls under siege. This is what happens when you draw too close to Trump. You’re diminished at best, mortified at worst. You’ve either done work dirtier than you meant to or told fibs bigger than you ought to or been sullied by contact or been thrown to the wolves. … For all Trump’s career and all his campaign, he played the part of Midas, claiming that everything he touched turned to gold. That was never true. This is: Almost everyone who touches him is tarnished, whether testifying or not.”